The Loire Valley, especially Blois and the Châteaux of the Loire by Rosemary Kneipp & Jean Michel Avril

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Postcard from Australia – A House in Armidale

Date: February 23, 2016

Author: avril

Armidale on the New England Tableland, is a lovely university town of 20,000 people where constructions cannot be more than 2 stories high (ground + 2). This is a newly constructed house in a beautiful wooded setting that blends in perfectly with the rest of the local architecture.

3 comments on “Postcard from Australia – A House in Armidale”

Armidale is nice. I like the way that house has been settled into its landscape and I like the cinnamon brown colour of the wood. I once spent a very happy weekend at the University there doing an indigo dyeing course. In fact, now that I think about it, I was offered a place at Armidale Uni to do journalism when I left school, but I turned it down to do something somewhere else.

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The Loire and city of Blois

The Loire River is the longest river in France, covering more than 1,000 km from its source in the Massif Central to its mouth in the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic Ocean. The main towns are Nevers, Orleans, Blois, Tours and Nantes. It is famous for its châteaux, particularly Chenonceau, Chambord, Chaumont and Cheverny, and its vineyards. The Loire Valley, a World Heritage Site, spanning about 300 km, is located in the middle stretch, 2 to 3 hours south of Paris.

Blois, where I live, is a town of 50,000 people ideally located for visiting the area. Although much was destroyed during the war, it still has some lovely old streets winding up the steep banks of the Loire. It was once the centre of the French Renaissance with a prestigious castle. Louis XII, king of France in 1498, was born there in 1462. One of its citizens, Denis Papin, invented the steam engine in 1647 and the illusionist Louis-Eugène Roubert-Houdin, born in 1805, is celebrated in the “House of Magic” just opposite the castle.